Cloud Computing

Not a new concept
This is not a new concept, many organisations have been using bureau type services or data centers since the time computers were invented to provide aggregated savings through sharing facilities. What has changed is the new technologies that have enabled servers to be commodities. You can order a new server across the internet as easy as you coud order a new Television and for almost the same price. This is revolutionising technology facilities

What is it about
Why is there so much discussion about cloud computing. The scale of the data centers that have been set up and the efficiencies achieved are mind blowing. Microsoft has set up 6 data centers around the world each about the size of 10 football fields. Where in an organisation you may have 5 to 10 servers managed by 1 staff member, these data centers have 10,000 servers managed by one person. The data center is not a building it is a field of containers with each container holding a 1,000 severs. The supplier such as Dell or HP supplies a container of servers, it is plugged into the power and computer network and away it goes. If a server fails, they don't fix it they transfer the system to another server. After so many servers fail in the container, they call the supplier to replace the container. This enables efficiencies we cannot dream of in a small organisation.

What is the business Benefit

Cost savings. To set up a departmental server is around $10,000 a cloud server is as little as a $1,000 a year.

Subscription Model: You pay for what you use. If you want a server for 3 months, you only pay for 3 months.

The cloud provider has all the security and technology experts, you do not have to employ them all including backing up those skills

Built in redundancy: The server and data is duplicated 3 times and can be different geographical regions, all for a $1,000 a year.

Scalability: If your websites overloaded, you can add new servers in minutes and then delete them when they are no longer needed

There are issue to consider

Data Sovereignty: There could be issues of privacy laws if information is stored offshore
Privacy and Security: There is still a comfort factor of keeping confidential information in house rather that having it on the internet. However data may be more exposed on your internal network than in the cloud as organisations do not have the same caliber of staff as larger data centers have.
Requires Work: You cannot just pick up your systems and transfer them to the cloud, they have to be customised to a new environment.

Hybrid
Organisations are moving to a mix of internal and cloud based systems. You use cloud where it makes sense and keep internal what makes sense.

Organisations are also looking at the use of cloud for disaster recovery system if the internal system is impacted.

Where does Dacono see benefit
Cloud computing provides a number of benefits. Dacono can reduce support costs as a significant number of calls are related to issues created by our clients internal IT. By controlling the environment we reduce costs. We are able to support organisations across the world including developing nations.

Dacono is developing Dac4cast to take advantage of cloud computing to provide better service to our clients. It is up to the clients whether they wish to take advantage of the cloud or keep the system internal, however they will have a choice.